smallies and hooks in the right and wrong places

[Jim Spriggs]

Fellow Meramec River Enthusiasts,

Sunday's weather conditions were not ideal, with the cold front and rain.  However, I decided to fish the Middle Meramec.  45 minutes into the trip I caught a big one--myself!--with a worm hook.  I, at first, tried to remove it myself, but it ultimately required a trip to Urgent Care.  For those squeamish among you, don't look at the first picture below. 

Once the hook was removed from my now numb forearm (thanks to the inventor of lydocaine), I went back to the river and caught an 18 3/4" bronzeback.  We were fishing slow with soft plastics, and this one hit a Z-Man Turbo Craw on a stand-up finesse jig.

Was it worth the trip to Urgent Care? Definitely.  But, I will be more careful in the future when my line is hung up on shore. 

 

 

 

 

[DADAKOTA]

Nice fish.  Were you by chance using mono when you impaled yourself?  The stretch in mono is like pulling back a slingshot.  Lots of energy upon release from wherever your bait was snagged.  Always turn your head when trying to pull one free.  The son of my Dad's friend was live bait fishing on a creek and became snagged.  The line broke a the hook and the split shot ended up hitting him directly in the eye.  He lost his eye by not turning his head.  Fluoro does not recoil as badly when it breaks as mono does and braid is far less.

[Ham]

Nice fish! 

[Mitch f]

Nice fish and now because you were impaled by a hook you have a rite of passage into river smallie heaven. 

[MOFishwater]

3 hours ago, DADAKOTA said:

Nice fish.  Were you by chance using mono when you impaled yourself?  The stretch in mono is like pulling back a slingshot.  Lots of energy upon release from wherever your bait was snagged.  Always turn your head when trying to pull one free.  The son of my Dad's friend was live bait fishing on a creek and became snagged.  The line broke a the hook and the split shot ended up hitting him directly in the eye.  He lost his eye by not turning his head.  Fluoro does not recoil as badly when it breaks as mono does and braid is far less.

 

This.

I just had my 3rd eye surgery in my right eye from a texas rigged worm that wrecked my right eye in April 2001. Lucky to be able to even see at this point but it's been a miserable run.

Graduated the previous year and was up friday afternoon to hang out with some friends and my girlfriend (now wife). Headed to buddy's house to hit his pond while my lady finished up her 3pm class. Looked at my watch and it was 3:50 and I was late and knew I had to hurry or lady would be upset;) "one more cast" into a big brush pile resulted in a snag...in a hurry I did what I have done 10000x and started pulling to snap my line and get on the road.

Kept pulling and pulling and finally turned around to look back>ZING. Woke up laying halfway in the pond screaming in agony and had blood pouring out of my eye, knocked me flat out with the impact. Caught the bullet weight directly in my eye, luckily the hook snagged in my eyebrow just above my lid but the bullet weight did it's bullet-job and destroyed me. Lots more gory details but detatched retina/rebuilt drainage duct/scleral buckle to rebuild eye got me started...then I had a cataract removed 2 years ago (mid-30s) and 2nd cataract surgery 2 months ago. Horrible. Painful. Expensive. Ruined my hunting in many areas as it's my dominant/shooting eye that got drilled. So stupid and so avoidable. ALWAYS wear eye protection when you are fishing. If you have to, just cut your line and buy a new lure. Ain't worth it. Ugh.

[Smallieguy87]

Back when I still worked in a hospital i was in the ER and we had a small boy who looked to be maybe 7 or 8 years old being brought in with one of those $1 spinnerbaits that walmart sells hanging from his eye. His mom said he was running through the garage and the lure was hanging from a fishing rod when it caught him. Luckily the hook was in between the eye and the eyelid instead of being in his Cornea, Iris, Pupil etc. 

[Johnsfolly]

Nice a great smallmouth! And Ouch on the hooked forearm.

[Al Agnew]

It always is tougher to remove a hook from your arm or hand when you're by yourself, but you CAN do it with the string trick.  Here's how if this happens again...

1.  You will need a long length of strong line.  A quadrupled section mono will do, better is a thicker line like fly line, or a long shoelace.

2.  If the hook is a treble attached to a lure, separate it from the lure.  This can be the toughest part of the whole process.  A pair of sidecutters is a really nice thing to have with you.  If it's a single hook, you're golden.

3.  Go to the bank, and find a good small but sturdy tree or something you can tie the line to, something that doesn't give or bend much.  Loop the line under the bend of the hook, tie it securely to the tree or whatever.  This might be awkward but is doable with the hook in you.

4.  Now, move around however you need to move so that the line is tight and ready to pull against the bend of the hook.  In other words, you want it to be pulling the hook point back and out of your arm.

5.  Now, take your other hand, and press on the eye of the hook, pressing it hard TOWARD the buried point.  The eye should at this point be making a dent in your skin.  When you've got it pressed down hard and directly toward the point of the hook, jerk on your arm HARD away from the tree or whatever you have the line tied to.  The hook should pop right out.  But you have to do it hard and quick.  If you have two hands to work with, you're simply jerking the line with your other hand, the one that's not pressing the eye of the hook, but if you only have one hand to work with you have to tie it to something and accomplish the same jerking motion.  

I've taken a bunch of hooks out of myself and others with the string trick, but only once have I had to do it the way I just described.  I had a streamer hook (which I'd stupidly forgotten to flatten the barb) hooked in my hand.  I used my fly line and a tree root to get it out.  In every case where I've used the string trick, it was almost painless and a WHOLE LOT less barbaric than running the point of the hook on through your skin or cutting it out with a scalpel the way they usually insist on doing it in urgent care places and emergency rooms.  I have a doctor friend out here in Montana that insists that cutting it out is the only way to do it, but I think he thinks that surgery justifies the emergency room fees more that popping it out with a string.

 

[moguy1973]

I've always wondered why the UC's and ER's don't use or even know about the string trick when removing hooks where it's possible to use that method.

I've only ever had one hook buried in my skin past the barb and it was from a Damiki Dolphin WTD lure.  The lure was brand new out of the box so it still had super sharp hooks and the bass I was removing it from flinched just as I was reaching into it's mouth and the hook dug deep into my thumb just behind the cuticle on my left hand .  It was close enough to the nail though that it had gone through the root of the nail.  I thought for sure I was fubar and would have to go get medical attention to get it removed but I really didn't see any way for even them to push it through to cut the barb since it was through the nail.  I finally did manage to get it out by pushing down on the shank with my first finger and pulling on the bend of the hook to get the barb to clear everything enough.  Hurt like the dickens and as the nail grew out I had a nice hole in the middle of it until the hole made it to the tip of my finger about 2 months later.

[Haris122]

That's one reason I like my glasses. I need them, but that aside I wouldn't trade them for contact lenses just because it provides that much extra protection. Luckily I've only had one real deep tricky hook in me, from a flicker shad treble where a single point dug itself in my finger right underneath the edge of the fingernail. I thought like Mitch I would have to loose the fingernail, but luckily it was just close enough to the edge that I managed to get it out without damaging the fingernail. Oh well, only fair to feel that displeasure once in a while when the fish feel it too.

Aside from that I hit myself pretty good in the eye while tightening the band that closes the lid on a barrel at a prior job. Thought I had really messed up my eye, cause I thought I was seeing differently out of it than the other one, but thankfully what really happened was that the lens absorbed most of the impact, deflected towards my eyebrow, and in the process got knocked out of the frame, and it took me a second to realize that.

Sweet Bass by the way.